That One Scheme of Loki's No One Ever Talks About
by ILycorisI
Summary: Clint and Hulk are the best of friends. Thor has been leaving dead mice around the tower. Steve is a Disney princess. Only two of these things are related.


Steve Rogers had always thought himself more of a dog person before The Cat showed up. It was perched right on the doorstep and looked for all the world as if it had been waiting the whole time for Steve to return from grocery shopping. Still, it _was_ thin and so Steve couldn't help but scoop it up and bring it into the building.

Clint came into the kitchen just as Steve was procuring a bowl of milk. Before he could place it on the ground for the cat, the precocious creature jumped up on the counter and started lapping it up right there. The archer snorted and said, "Knew that thing was bad news."

"Has it been out there long?" Steve asked. His voice filled with concern despite the fact the cat was now digging its claws into his chest after having been picked up.

"Since yesterday. The Big Guy and I came back from that skirmish down in Manhattan and found it outside the tower. Started hissing and flicking its tail back and forth the moment it saw us. You should have seen it. Almost gave Hulk an aneurysm."

Bruce Banner had been the first person to settle down at Avengers Tower which was entirely unsurprising as even after the Tesseract fiasco he had remained good friends with Tony Stark. Even now the two were practically attached at the hip. What was surprising, however, was how quickly Bruce's other personality had bonded with Clint. The two were almost always in the practice room together and often teamed up on missions these days.

Steve frowned and pulled the cat in question down from his shoulder where it was trying to launch itself to freedom. "What, why?"

Clint shrugged, reached into the cupboard, and pulled out a cup of ramen noodles. He popped them in the microwave and said with air quotes "Hulk no trust small, murderous animals".

Steve rolled his eyes and looked down at the furball currently trying to chew through his fingers. "That's insane. It's a harmless animal."

Clint took his noodle out and slurped thoughtfully. "Steve, I'm an assassin. I make a business of trusting nothing and nobody."

Steve understood the sentiment. But it was a _cat_.

xxx

A cat it seemed, that he was unable to get rid of. He had hung up posters and notices all over the city and even taken out an ad in the newspaper but to no avail. The cat stayed.

(In reality, all of the advertisements had disappeared within a few hours but this was something Steve wouldn't find out for quite a while.)

The unspoken agreement was that so long as Steve cared for the thing and it stayed out of sight the cat could live in the tower.

Only one of those rules was followed.

The cat made the tower its home and it treated the various Avengers with the kind of disdain a king would show its retainers.

The Hulk would holler and stomp around if it even attempted to approach him. Bruce for his part avoided its attention peacefully but if the feline dared come into his lab he would immediately start to resemble his green counterpart.

Thor kept up a constant attempt to earn the tiny dictator's favor. He would leave dead mice around the tower in this ill-fated endeavor until all the Avengers had to gather for one of their "talks". It was all for naught in any case as the cat shunned all of his gifts and pleasantries with an almost sadistic pleasure.

Clint seemed to find the thing amusing and would occasionally feed it scraps of fish or meat. He took to calling it Cap Jr. as it would often follow Steve around the place.

Tony made his dislike of the cat almost as evident as Hulk. Steve would often find the two in an intense staring match that could only be broken by an alien invasion or in some rare cases, shwarma.

Natasha never had to worry as it stayed clear of her for the most part. "I often have that effect on animals," she told Steve one day. He nodded but secretly thought differently as he would often catch his cat staring at her from afar.

xxx

If the Avengers Tower was the cat's domain then Steve's bed was its palace. When he first brought his new friend back to his room he had expected it to makes its home on the pile of blankets he left on floor or at least on the foot of his bed but instead he found his pillow monopolized.

He tried to move it half-halfheartedly the first night but waking up with a cat around his neck soon became the norm for Steve Rogers. On the nights he spent away from home he found it hard to fall asleep without the familiar low rumble of a purr.

"Cute," Tony had commented upon waltzing into Steve's room one morning. Steve was waking up, bleary-eyed, with something rough on the side of his face that turned out to be a cat tongue. Tony appeared to be having trouble breathing.

"I c-came in –pfft… to, suh-see if you want to sp-spare," Tony explained, covering his mouth with one hand. Both Steve and his feline companion glared. This seemed to set Tony off once more as he ran out of the room declaring rather excitedly, "Steve is a Disney princess!"

Steve was more bemused than offended by this but when Tony came in the next morning with scratches all over his face he didn't comment.

Not long after, Steve woke up in the middle of the night to find his pillow uninhabited. The door to his room was slightly open and he could see the motion-sensing hall light had come on. Steve, curious, slipped out of bed and followed the light to the top floor. Tony's floor.

Tony's bedroom door was still closed but the office's central computer appeared to be on. Steve crept over to the machine and touched the screen. A plethora of Tony's private data on all of the current Avengers was displayed. According to the date in the top right corner of the screen this information had been accessed throughout the last month.

Steve let out a breath and scrolled through the various entries. He was shocked to find that in the previous weeks the only files that had been looked at were his and a couple of newspapers reporting the return of Captain America and his joining of The Avengers.

He stared at the screen for a moment more than whispered, "Er, JARVIS, you there?"

"Yes, Captain Steven Rogers." The AI replied in an equally quiet voice.

"Just Steve," he replied distractedly. "Can you tell me if Tony's computer has been infiltrated by an outside force? This data…"

JARVIS was silent for only a few seconds before replying. "No, Captain Steve. All of the information up on the screen has been accessed from this room. There are no problems with the system's security."

"Huh, thanks." Steve said and went downstairs. When he returned to his room he saw a pair of bright eyes staring at him from the direction of his bed.

xxx

While he wasn't a genius like Tony or Bruce, Steve Rogers wasn't stupid either. So when he woke up the next morning with a very warm, very human-looking body in his arms he wasn't particularly surprised, just confused.

"Um," Steve said intelligently and moved the hand that had been cupping Loki's face.

The Norse God in question gave him a look that Steve had previously thought only possible on a cat and said, "Sleeping now."

Steve was about to argue the fact when Loki placed his hand back where it had been and circled his own arms around Steve's back, burying his face in his chest with a final, low murmur. Steve let out a sigh and slowly closed his eyes. It was still early, after all.


End file.
